As a TBM I would shake my head at people from other religions that engaged in various types of faith healing. It was so easy to see the issues with that while not seeing that trying to be healed using priesthood blessings, fasting, and prayer was no different.

I can see where having hope and benefiting from a placebo effect from those types of activities could be useful. Many believers combine those activities with seeking medical interventions. In such cases, it is all relatively harmless and arguably helpful on some level.

Unfortunately, there are some believers, that for whatever reason feel that faith alone or faith combined with alternative medical treatments are adequate. For relatively mild health problems also not necessarily a problem. I have witnessed several instances where medical treatment was imperative and was not sought out for any number of reasons.

One recent example is that of an acquaintance from a former ward who passed away at a young age from a treatable infection. This member refused medical treatment as they felt that faith and alternative medicine would cure them.

I doubt the situation will improve based on discussions with TBM family and friends. That type of belief is still fairly common and does not seem to be diminishing in any meaningful way.

I'm reminded of a story I once heard by a Mormon whose father hada stroke. The TBM family called the Home Teachers who came overand gave him a priesthood blessing. After that didn't seem tomake a difference they FINALLY called for an ambulance and gothim to the emergency room.

Punchline: he'd gone too long without medical help so the extentof the stroke was much worse than it would have been otherwise.It was one of those situations where getting medical help rightaway was important, but they wanted to give the "power of thepriesthood" a chance first.

I've told you all about the nasty kidney disease that runs through my family. I was 15 when my father was in his final month of life.

An old friend of my grandmother's (a nasty, judgmental old lady who had never liked me) asked me if I had prayed for my father to be healed. I had, to no avail. This old lady handed me a copy of Mary Baker Eddy's book about Christian Science.

Mary Baker Eddy was, I think, a contemporary of Emerson and the Transcendentalists, so it was pretty heavy reading. The old lady who gave it to be said that if I prayed JUST RIGHT (and this magic book would tell me how), my father could be healed.

It apparently never occurred to my mother or to my grandmother to reassure me that 1) this was BS. 2) My father's life or death was not squarely on MY shoulders.

I felt guilty for a long time, because at the time I got the book, my father only had about a week to live anyway, and we were too busy with nursing duties for me to read much of anything. Watching him die by degrees was bad enough. My mother's insistence that there would be NO crying or expressions of grief in the household didn't help.

When I did get around to reading the book, I didn't really understand enough of the rather complex ideas to have been able to even try to implement them. Despite that, I felt that I had been given a tool that might have saved my father's life, and I was just too stupid to understand how to use it.

Hospitals in Utah are doing just fine. In fact, considering the level of prescription drug abuse, Mormons are only too happy to run to a doctor. There are the nut cases who think faith and/or natural supplements will cure anything, but they are the exception, even in Zion.